OUTDOORS; One Hunter's Radical Idea Puts Him in the Line of Fire

Gary Alt has been cursed by disgruntled, pistol-bearing Pennsylvanians as a secret operative for the antigun lobby, and denounced as a dirty ''environmentalist'' from Lock Haven to Good Intent. He has worn a bulletproof vest to public meetings in rural towns that might have been celebrated by Norman Rockwell, and once a young man got up so close to him under the glowing neon sign in the parking lot of a bowling alley that Alt could smell the booze on his breath.

''They're going to take you out of here in a body bag tonight,'' the young man chortled. ''And I won't do a thing to stop them.''

This isn't exactly what life is supposed to be like for a wildlife biologist. But the 51-year-old Alt in some ways brought it upon himself. For in his evangelical heart he knew that if he hoped to get his radical message about the need for new, more restrictive hunting regulations across to Pennsylvania's army of a million deer hunters, he would have to do it one skeptical, sometimes intransigent sportsman at a time. And he knew, from the experience he had accumulated as a nationally acclaimed bear biologist before he assumed the reins of the Pennsylvania Game Commission's deer program in 1999, that this could -- and almost certainly would -- get ugly.

Yet Alt has succeeded, persuading an estimated 80 percent of Pennsylvania's whitetail deer hunters and legislators to embrace precedent-setting hunting regulations based less on the traditional, politically driven desire to expand hunting opportunities than on hard, scientific evidence. Alt also believes that the radical changes will recenter hunting on the most legitimate function the activity has in the eyes of nonhunting citizens -- as a way to help control an exploding Pennsylvania herd now numbering 1.3 million deer. And experts agree that Pennsylvania's deer are munching their way toward catastrophe, taking entire ecosystems and niche species along with them.

The heavily resisted new conventions, put into effect over three years, began last year with provisions for culling far more females than in previous years -- this year, the state anticipates a record take of 300,000 does. And when the gun season in Pennsylvania opens on Dec. 2, hunters in most counties will be permitted to shoot only bucks that have at least three tines on one antler (generally, bucks that are at least 2 1/2 years old). In 2003, Alt plans to begin management based on habitat characteristics rather than county boundaries.

''Raising more deer than the land can support has been the biggest mistake in the history of wildlife management,'' said Alt, a native of Moscow, in the northeast corner of the state. ''We've been doing it wrong for 70 years, and that's one reason it's been so hard to show that it's just plain bad for everyone.''

Alt, who holds a bachelor's degree in wildlife science from Utah State and a doctorate in forest ecology from the University of West Virginia, says the new regulations are tools that will help the state achieve two goals: striking the most productive balance between deer numbers and the available habitat, and creating a buck-to-doe ratio that promotes the genetic health in the herd.

''The ecosystem is pretty complicated, but good deer management really isn't,'' Alt said. ''Mostly, it's about getting the right number of deer of the right age and the right sex in the right places.''

Because Alt is both a hunter and a 25-year veteran of the Pennsylvania fish and game bureaucracy, he also knew that hunters don't always have access to good science, and don't necessarily fall prostrate before it even when they do. Like hunters in other states, many Pennsylvanians traditionally resisted shooting does on the premise that does made bucks and more does meant more bucks to shoot. And hunters usually shot any buck who wandered into their crosshairs on the premise that if they didn't, another hunter would.

Over time, this practice grotesquely distorted population ratios, genetics and breeding dynamics. A staggering 90 percent of all bucks are shot when their antlers are first visible as short spikes, at the age of 18 months. And only about 1 in 100 Pennsylvania bucks reaches the prime breeding age of 4.

As Ray Martin, a former president of the politically powerful, 57,000-member Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen's Clubs, freely admits: ''We've always worked on having a lot of legal deer for a lot of hunters, so Gary had a real battle on his hands. I thought he bit off more than he could chew, and I'm a little surprised that he has won the hunters over so convincingly.''

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Others, like Donald Stunzi, whose friendship with Alt dates from their days at Utah State, agree about Alt's energy and powers of persuasion. ''Gary grew up on a farm, milking cows every morning at 4 a.m.,'' Stunzi said. ''He has an endless capacity for work.''

Alt knew from more than two decades of experience that efforts by his predecessors to begin better deer management had been stymied by a few strident but well-connected lobbyists who said they spoke for hunters. Thus, his first tactic was to convince more than 60 state legislators to co-sponsor some 200 public meetings that would enable him to lay out the rueful news on the deer herd and convince them that hunters could help the state avert the pending ecological disaster -- and save their beloved pastime along the way.

''It was like running for governor,'' Alt said. ''I think I've been within 25 miles of virtually every Pennsylvanian, and we had an average audience of over 500 people. We never ended a meeting until everyone who wanted to make a comment got a turn at the microphone.''

In order to win over fiery hearts and stubborn minds, Alt relied on impressive stores of two qualities that often warred within him, patience and ardor. He learned, over time, that if you gave the hotheads enough rhetorical rope, they eventually would hang themselves -- most hunters were rational, receptive to scientific fact, and eager to embrace sound conservation strategies. Often, Alt felt upon entering a meeting hall that he was stumbling into a room filled with gas fumes, fumbling with a matchbook full of facts. He never lost his head.

''What's amazing to me is that when I walk up to the mike, I really have no agenda, no script,'' Alt said. ''I kind of heave this up from my soul. It's like some Broadway play, except it's real.''

In addition, the state produced and handed out over 30,000 free copies of a video detailing the reasoning behind the new regulations. Alt understood the way his analysis would be transformed as it was passed from one hunter to another, in a barroom version of the ancient parlor game of telephone. The video, Alt says, has helped solve any number of barber shop brouhahas when one of the principals might say, ''Heck, I've got the video in the truck, just see the facts for yourself.''

In fact, Alt sometimes wishes that he had a similar vehicle to help him quell the emotions that are so easily inflamed as he traces a seemingly sad history of deer mismanagement.

''I have always been an avid hunter,'' he said, ''but I think this idea of 'just give us more and more and more deer' threatens the future of our sport, and I know it threatens the future of the deer themselves.''

As for the threats to Alt himself, they have abated. He gets no more hate mail. ''Like it or not, public relations has an enormous impact on what will live, and what will die,'' he said. ''I think we're starting to win that battle.''